Ten Indiana fire departments so rural? Check.
Diversity correlation? 11% Black in both the 10 or less and the over 40 pushups groups. Almost all the rest white. So not relaxed standards for DEI. Worst group fatter, higher BP, more likely current smokers. And older. 13 years older than the best group.
By diversity I was also thinking of gender. But I guess the older you are, the less likely you can do a certain number of push-ups.
These were all men, mostly white men. But yeah 13 years older on average can do fewer pushups and not a shock more likely to die in the next ten years. They did try to control for age and BMI. That result was … less impressive. Only one comparison group reached statistical significance:
Even after adjusting for age and BMI, we observed an independent association of push-up capacity with CVD outcomes. Increased capacity was associated with a lower risk for CVD outcomes, with the comparison of the 21- to 30-push-ups group vs the 0- to 10-push-up group being statistically significant (hazard ratio, 0.25; 95% CI 0.08-0.76), although the other group comparisons did not reach statistical significance.
My SIL once started on the path to become a firefighter. I don’t think she ever did it, but she did take the physical tests, which were the same for men and women. Specifically, women recruits had to lift the same weight as men, and do the same pushups and pullups. And we talked at the time about how that was fair, because they would have the same responsibility to help old fat disabled or unconscious people out of burning buildings.
Maybe that’s not true everywhere. But that was the rule in NYC.
It raises the questions - what are good metrics to use for adequate strength?
For a specific job? For in general? As a predictor of future health and function?
For firefighters maybe carrying a weighted sandbag for distance and time and some weighted rope pull tests make more sense than what do you bench or pullups?
I vaguely recall some revisions to military tests and some controversy over it?
For longevity there are many: grip test; standing up from cross leg on the ground …
Well, for my desk jockey job, sufficient strength is enough to get to the workplace, speak, and type. A paraplegic with some mechanical aids would generally be physically qualified. 
One of the prevailing themes in this thread has been the lament that lifting weights is boring.
Now, I am well aware of the well proven maxim that different people like different things, but if I may humbly say…this does not resonate with me.
You don’t like getting sweaty? I get it. I only like it when I lift.
It’s uncomfortable? Fair enough. That is indeed a reality of working out I can’t ameliorate.
But boring? Nah.
But I think I have an idea why people may feel that way, and it comes downs to effort and intention.
If one were to pick up some light dumbbell and, let’s say, curled it 10 times, or until it started to burn real bad, then stopped, waited a few minutes before doing it again, yeah, that’s boring.
But people who lift enthusiastically don’t do that.
Instead, they may start out with a light weight that they can comfortably lift 10 times. But after they feel warmed up, they’ll Inevitably push themselves to improve their performance from what they typically do.
So, the person may end up picking a weight they can do perfectly 7 times with the goal of getting to 10. And, if they eventually get there, they’ll move up in weight being handled.
In that regard, the sets aren’t mindlessly boring. Either you are warming up for a “work set”, or you are trying to improve over time. This is called progressive overload, but it really is just a metric of progress.
I describe this because I think it marks a difference in mindset between just doing physical labor and a competition with yourself to get better.
(And between “efforts” or sets, you’ve got music playing and people watching. Nothing boring about either)
Again, I understand people who find that process uncomfortable. And I understand that not everybody who goes to the gym cares about it. I’m not saying that it’s the only way to benefit from weight lifting.
I’m just saying that it might explain why what is perceived as boring may not be that way to everybody who lifts. Some people aren’t engaged in mindless repetition
(I suspect that one reason some women fall in love with lifting weights is because they like to see the progress of getting stronger over time. Once the myth that this would cause a woman to get bulky was debunked, and it became mainstream for women to work out hard, they stopped finding lifting weights to be boring)
This doesn’t resonate with me at all. 
Is there any activity that you do that you try to improve at over time? Bigger and better puzzles that are more challenging than the last?
I mean, certainly not every joyful activity must be competitive, but sometimes it is interesting to try to master a skill over time. Golfers try to get their best score, for example.
Nope. I’m not really into competition, especially competition with myself.
Are there things i want to learn? Sure. Am i happy if i get better at some skill? Sure. Do i sit there practicing it thinking, “this will make me better!” And think that’s fun or satisfying or interesting? Absolutely never. If doing the thing isn’t fun or satisfying or interesting in its own right, I’m probably not going to master that skill, honestly.
That’s not what I’m talking about. The effort is very much in the moment.
What’s interesting is your performance. Imagine a person who goes to the track each week and tries to beat his best 100 meter dash time. Running 100 meters isn’t interesting in its own right, but it would be in interesting thing for the person to do, in that they are pursuing a certain outcome. As opposed to a person who just went to the track and ran laps until they were tired.
Yeah, not seeing it.
Sometimes, doing something well is fun just for having done it well. But i can’t even imagine what “lifting well” would feel like.
Once, when I’d been sick and had just gotten better, i took joy in lifting chairs as i helped to reset a room. Because it was joyous not to feel weak and exhausted any longer. But it’s not as if i went out with a goal of lifting chairs. And it wasn’t any more fun the next week. But that’s the closest i can think of.
In general, if you are competitive or if you like repetitive monotony then you’re more likely to get into weightlifting.
If you are competitive or have a strong team spirit/hatred of letting others down, then you might do good with team sports as an alternate method of fitness that you can stay serious at.
But none of that is to say that you can’t just appreciate the outcomes, recognize that you need to do it for your health, etc.
Not everything we do has to be something we enjoy for itself. People give me money to do work for them. I enjoy the money. I find ways to enjoy the work more but I’d probably spend my time doing something else if it weren’t for the money.
I have a fraught relationship with competitiveness myself. I have to consciously keep it in check. I very intentionally don’t do weightlifting in any competitive way, including trying to put up bigger numbers. I lift to near failure in a rotating variety of ways. It doesn’t feel monotonous at all because it isn’t monotonous; it is extremely varied. I rotate aerobic exercises too. And vary amount of each based on circumstances.
Yes I have had short term goals and I have shared them here: endurance events of various sorts; the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim; attempting (and generally failing to) master various skills like pistol squats or muscle ups or various gymnastics lever holds. It was still fun to see how far I could get in the progression before failing.
I don’t think beating past scores is required. I do think it is much easier to keep up with if it can be any combination of fun, relaxing, or at least satisfying. But again, if there is no form of resistance exercise that is any of them, and aerobic hits the itch more, then just a little resistance is still worth forcing yourself to do because a small amount adds so much to healthspan and function.
Hard for me to imagine there isn’t some form for someone to find that isn’t at all fun or relaxing or satisfying though.
I hire a personal trainer. She’s a charismatic person, and hiring her creates a social obligation to actually show up. And then she tells me to 15 reps if this and hold that pose for a movie, or whatever.
This is expensive, but it’s worth it to me, because i understand that this stuff is good for me.
But i rarely get anything done for a few hours afterwards, because I’m tired.
I’m returning to this, and I get the unserious of it, but I am going to a bit serious. For you the jobs that matter, that you want fitness for, are not combat or firefighter readiness, but you do want to ready at any time to lift a bunch of chairs to reset a room, and be able to live well for a good long time.
That doesn’t require being in a top percentile, really just avoiding being in the lowest groups. Especially on the strength measurements.
This sentence gave me a headache.
Sorry. It should have said
“And then she tells me to 15 reps of this and hold that pose for a minute, or whatever.”
It was actually meant seriously. Not that “i don’t need any strength”, but
I think for the majority of Americans, their specific job isn’t an important consideration in “how much strength do i need”. In fact, i think fire fighting is unusual, in that those who do it ought to be able to carry a person, but might not be called upon to do it often. Most jobs that require strength require it on a regular basis, and just doing the job is enough exercise to maintain that level of strength.
For instance, the mason who rebuilt my front walk told me one of his customers asked if he worked out. And he scoffed. Because he spends his days lifting large stones and sacks of cement. (They had 60 lb and 100 lb sacks.) He was a very muscular guy, and yes, that was required for his job. But he didn’t need to do any additional exercise to maintain that level of strength.
But we all want enough strength to catch our balance when slipping on ice, and to be able to carry groceries into the house. Maybe enough to lift the dog or shovel the snow.
My personal trainer has some frail elderly ladies as clients. She says that one thing she has them do is go down to the floor and get up again, to make sure they have the strength to do that. That’s a really important measure of strength, although neither you nor i explicitly works on that. But i do pushups (sloppy, horrible style) so that i don’t have to worry about critical measures of strength like that.
The impetus for my question had specifically been your SIL’s experience - yes IMHO some baseline of physical capability for specific tasks is necessary, even if infrequently called upon. But what tests best equitably discriminate the ability to perform those tests? Getting a body weight sized sandbag up over your shoulders and carrying it for distance and time, perhaps in full firefighter gear, even up and down stairs, which yes requires some upper body strength but is more dependent on core and lower body strength and both muscular and cardiovascular endurance, seems to replicate the task requirement. Pushups and pullups? Those are very upper body strength focused, less vital to the tasks, but giving men a distinct advantage.
Still among men, inability to do even more than ten pushups? Odds are great they would also fail other tests as well.
The same issue of actually testing the fitness required for safe and adequate job task performance, rather than arbitrary tasks that men naturally perform better, is part of military fitness testing. Should there be different standards or instead one that more precisely actually test for job fitness demands that are not necessarily upper body strength centric?
For the rest of us, yeah it is more the tests that correlate best with health metrics, from current state like metabolic profiles and blood pressure, to future health span inclusive of cognitive function.
Yes getting up to stand from sitting on the floor is one of those tests with good predictive value, especially for women.
And doing variants of it that challenge where you are today are good to do at any point. Maybe the simple getting up from cross legged on the floor to standing, steadily without wobble, without using your hands, forearms, knees, or the sides of your legs for support, is easy. Try it holding a lightweight dumbbell in each hand. A slightly heavier one in both hands. With asymmetric weights. If you can do it safely try jumping up to standing from on your knees. Then while holding a lightweight dumbbell! The progression builds explosive power and balance even more than strength, and deposits in those banks makes falling on the ice, tripping on the rug, not being able to carry groceries, being unable to get up from the floor easily, so on, all much less likely now and over the next decades.
(Yes I do explicitly work on that: some of those things are part of my varied mix. And weighted box jumps/step downs, exercises while on a balance disc … jumping from knees to standing holding a weight is a challenge let me tell ya!)
I get that some people do see weightlifting as monotonous, and like it for that reason (many talk about it being meditative. I guess it’s like stamp collecting)
My comments were trying to describe a perspective that doesn’t see weightlifting as “repetitive monotony”. I just don’t see it that way. I’m either warming up for a work set, or I’m doing a work set. If I’m doing a work set, I’m trying to reach a certain performance. It’s a challenge, and rewarding to meet or exceed the standard I’ve set.
I hasten to emphasize that my perspective is far from universal, and I’m not saying that others need to do it. But it does exist.
That’s what I’m referring to as the type of working out that I would perceive as boring. You aren’t striving for 15 reps; you aren’t seeing if you can get there with more weight than before. You’re just going through the motions.
I know you think I’m crazy, but if you aren’t a little bit nervous before a set, is it really going to be a good one?